


and after us, the flood

by meritmut



Series: and after us, the flood [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Light Angst, Mutual Pining, and they were roommates...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-29 09:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17201111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: Ben is here,she reminds herself for what feels like the thousandth time since they fled the war together.He is all you have.But the bond is gone, and he will barely look at her, and it doesn’t seem fair that she could escape Jakku and find people who actually cared for her and still, somehow, end up alone again.





	and after us, the flood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



> mucho love to [mneme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake) for poking the ending into shape xx

**

Whatever strange fixation the ancient Force-users held for heights, Rey could cheerily murder them for it.

Her calves are burning by the time she reaches the entrance to the temple complex, a doorway halfway up the mountainside framed by ornate stone pillars. Strange carved beasts clamber and writhe over the lintel, all interlocking limbs and tongues and long, serpentine bodies: Rey lets her fingers sweep over one of the creatures, tapping it on the nose in her own little ritual of passage to the temple. Pulling back her hood, she turns to look over one shoulder at the view from her vantage point, her eyes growing a little less tired as she lets the beauty of this world enfold her.

The smaller of the system’s stars is sailing toward the horizon, its twin having already set. In the distant sky, great winged creatures wheel and dive between mountaintops painted gold by the afternoon light, the scent of lilac blossoms lingering in the air.

Beauty is still a novel thing: it would be hard not to let it lift her spirits.

In some ways she feels a different person entirely to the girl from Jakku—she has seen more of the galaxy, has been changed irrevocably by it and wonders if they met now she would even recognise her former self, but to an outward observer there is about her gaze the same invincible clarity; that indefatigable light that refuses to go out.

(The fresh lilacs kept in pots around the temple attest that whatever she may feel, there is something of the old Rey that remains.)

Turning back toward the door she looks momentarily apprehensive, and then stubborn. Her jaw grows firm; her brows meet in a determined frown. Whatever lies inside the temple, she is resolved to meet it unflinching.

Hoisting her bag back onto her shoulder, she heads into the dim passageway in the mountain.

 

**

 

Kylo Ren, such as he is or was, is meditating by the pool in what they have come to call the shrine: the rough-hewn chamber at the heart of the upper temple. Rey pauses on the threshold to observe him, hesitant to intrude on what appears to be a rare moment of peace.

He sits cross-legged under a shaft of pale gold light, his back to the entrance and his open palms resting on his knees. His shoulders rise and fall with the measured cadence of his breathing, kept in time by the metronomic drip of water from a fissure in the rock above; a natural vent curtained by an exuberance of greenery that stains the light on its descent into the cave.

He is ethereal, cloaked in hazy viridescence, the sunshine tangling his sable hair in a net of gold. Even here, with scarcely fifteen feet between them, he is further away from her than he has ever been.

She wishes she could find the peace here that he does. This place, the Force—it denies her even that.

 

**

 

“This place...” Ben had turned to her, the second or third time they stood before the pool together and tried to make sense of why this world had called to them. “What does it make you feel?”

Rey had closed her eyes and reached out the way she had been taught, that windswept morning a dozen lifetimes ago. If she reached far enough, maybe, she could find that girl again: she could grasp the memory and feel again the way she had as the _Falcon_ soared in over the waves and she first laid eyes on Nimue’s craggy shores; the overwhelming sense of _summons_ that had led her to the hollow tree and what lay within.

There was a little of that feeling here. It had stolen her breath the first time she set foot inside the cave: the strange chimerical fusion of light and water, the ageless stillness of the mountain’s ancient heart. It called to her in a voice she was still learning to understand.

“Welcomed,” she answered at last.

Ben had nodded, as if he had expected as much. “I do not feel that,” he said softly. His gloved hands clenched in rigid fists at his sides, the familiar pulse under his left eye betraying his unease.

 _Not yet,_ Rey thought about assuring him, but this _thing_ was still new between them and every word that came out of her mouth felt like a gamble on uncertain odds. Whatever she said, no matter how kindly meant, could be the thing that shattered their fragile equilibrium—that broke the spell and made him change his mind and leave her.

And then she would be alone again.

Rey would die first.

She would watch her step, then, the way she had always done, planning each move she made across the wastes to avoid unstable ground or the traps laid by other scavengers, until she knew the lay of this unfamiliar land. And then—

And then.

She had no idea.

 

**

 

The smallest movement draws her eye: Ben’s fingers, flexing on his knee like an animal twitching in its sleep. It was the same hand she had held, Rey realises abruptly. The hand that had reached for hers in the darkness—the hand she had followed into nowhere.

She is so engrossed by the little tic that the sound of his voice nearly makes her jump.

“Are you going to come in?”

His words snap her out of her reverie. Rey blinks, shifting her gaze to fix it somewhere safer than his pale, long-fingered hands.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” she answers honestly. She couldn’t say why, if he asked. She couldn’t say when she began to care.

Things are different without the bond. They are learning this, day by day.

“I felt you,” Ben turns his head so she can see the elegant line of his profile; the proud jut of his nose above his soft mouth, his lashes feathered darkly against his cheek. His eyes are closed and for that she says a thankful prayer, because this world might take her breath away but nothing cuts her to the core as surely as his stare.

“You would too, if you learned how.”

This again. Rey sighs, leans her shoulder against the stone threshold and looks up at the light spilling down. “Maybe,” she agrees. “But I don’t know if I want to.”

Ben shifts, one eye flicking open, and she knows—she _knows_ —what he’s going to say.

“It’s not about want.”

And _oh,_ she wants to answer— _isn’t it?_

Instead, she leaves him to his meditations, turning on her heel and making her way up into the living caves. The sound of falling water fades and his presence in the Force recedes and she is on her own again, or as close to it as she can be, and maybe the war cannot touch them here but still Rey is no closer to peace.

She understands why Ben seeks serenity in the shrine. She understands, even if she cannot find it for herself.

Even if, maybe, after six thousand days of solitude, she has had enough of silence to last a lifetime.

Rey takes her supper by the fireside in the home they supposedly share, staring into the flames in a manner far too closely resembling Ben’s brooding for her liking. Her mind is restless: it moves like the night wind over the dunes. Memory slips in through the cracks, engulfs her.

There had been peace in the desert; peace, and quiet enough to drown in. Out in the empty quarter, the void that stretched from horizon to horizon and filled her head with the dizzying wheel of stars across the firmament, quiet was about the only thing which grew in abundance: an absence of sound heavy enough to suffocate. You learned to long for storms just for something to break the interminable silence, but when the winds died down and the sands fell still it would return.

You could go mad in so much peace.

Lately Rey has felt the silence drawing in again, imagined that she can feel her mind’s edges begin to fray.

 _Ben is here,_ she reminds herself for what feels like the thousandth time since they fled the war together. _He is all you have_.

But the bond is gone, and he will barely look at her, and it doesn’t seem fair that she could escape Jakku and find people who actually _cared_ for her and still, somehow, end up alone again. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The future she had seen—this wasn’t it.

Sometime after nightfall Ben’s hulking shadow flits across the doorway, sparing barely a glance in her direction before he’s gone. Rey stays beside the fire until only the embers are left, waiting until she knows he is sound asleep before she finds her own bed.

If she dreams, she does not remember it.

**

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt → After they defeat the Praetorian Guards and Kylo makes his offer, Rey makes a counteroffer in a last ditch attempt to protect her friends/the Resistance from a First Order under Kylo Ren's command: if he's so keen to let the past die, let it die without him to guide it towards its death, let the First Order and the Resistance destroy each other or not as the galaxy wills it. They didn't have to take part in any of it. They could just be Ben and Rey together, rather than Supreme Leader and Jedi Knight on opposing sides of a war. He accepts her offer. What does the future look like for them and for the galaxy at large?   
>  Visual insp.   
>    
>  (The Art of the Last Jedi, p.22)


End file.
